Cruise Through History - Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands

Itinerary 14 of Cruise through History's latest release includes tales found in ports of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. In this collection are tales of explorers, who mapped Australia, New Zealand and Polynesia, and of the indigenous peoples they encountered. Follow Able Tasman in Tasmania and James Cook as he stops along routes in New Zealand and Australia. Infamous Captain William Bligh has his own story in this collection. Contrary to Hollywood movies, Bligh is heroic in real history. He came to Polynesia to collect breadfruit, a fool's errand for slave-owning Englishmen, and a mission made infamous in the Mutiny on the Bounty. Bligh lived through the mutiny, on the force of will and excellent skills as a mariner, to become part of history in Australia, as governor of New South Wales. In the final story in this Itinerary, follow the Bounty mutineers to Pitcairn Island, for an unsolved mystery. Did Fletcher Christian end his days, on an island in the middle of the South Pacific, or in Portsmouth, England, home of the Royal Navy, which traversed the seas hunting for him?

In each port, indigenous people are part of the ongoing story, integral to history and future of each place. Endearing is the Aboriginal Heart of Australia, told in Songlines, the literal dots of cultural understanding. In New Zealand, the Maori are Strong and Resilient, through times of the Treaty of Waitangi and its ambiguous translation. In New Zealand, the Treaty began a war, rather than came at its conclusion. The story here, is the evolution of Maori and European co-existence from the incident at Wairu, that led from War to a New, New Zealand of today.   

In Polynesia, experience the Island Gods, never fully vanquished when the French colonized French Polynesia. The story of the French in French Polynesia is an ode to the lack of virtue in colonization and to the leadership of Polynesian kings and queens. Paul Gauguin sought primitive people in Tahiti, yet found a complex culture, through whom he channeled his passion in art. The story of Bora Bora is a short story of party-loving Arioi warriors of ancient history, to Operation Bobcat in World War II, and the continuous party at Bloody Mary's today.

On Easter Island, learn secrets of Walking Moai and the Rapa Nui people for whom stone giants protected their mana. Then sail on the Mana, the schooner of Katherine Routledge, who spent more than a year on Easter Island, prior to World War I, documenting genealogies of the remnants of Rapa Nui people. Routledge began a personal adventure in science, which brought world-wide attention to the importance of preserving Rapa Nui culture, through the emerging field of ethnography.

Travel around Australia to Marvelous Melbourne, built by new wealth of a gold rush and sustained today by an environment devoted to the arts. In Hobart, Tasmania, visit Port Arthur for the story of the Transportation Era in Australia. Not all emigres from Europe were transportees. In Adelaide, Hahndorf is A Little Bit of Germany in South Australia. The Wild West of Australia lives on in Fremantle, home of the World Heritage Site Transportation Era prison and a streetscape of territorial pubs, cafés and coffee bars. Broome, an outpost of pearl divers, is the ideal location for mystery stories Of Pearls and Poets. History of Darwin was made by flyers of double winged and single engine aircraft. Then Darwin became famous as a port in the airplane race of the century. End the Australia tour with Independent Queenslanders of Brisbane. Brisbane, begun as a Transportation Era prison site, grew into a desirable, multicultural city.